Nat Chat

“The irony is that you do so much better, when you stop caring about the outcome and start connecting in the moment and being your best.” - Charlie Hoehn Charlie graduated in 2008 into one of the worst job markets in history, and after a few months of fruitlessly throwing his resume out on Monster, started cold emailing entrepreneurs he wanted to work with. That soon led to working with Ramit Sethi, Tucker Max, and eventually Tim Ferriss who he worked with for three years. Charlie took what he learned from landing these mentorships and compiled it into a book, “Recession Proof Graduate,” which has been read by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, and was one of the first books that inspired me to get off the traditional college path. But then, something happened. Charlie stopped feeling like himself, and after a particularly crazy week of work, realized he was developing anxiety that was having a growing negative impact on his life. It soon reached the point where, as he said, his own girlfriend

“Spending ten hours a week putting together a portfolio of your skills in college will often turn into a business before you even get the degree.” - Taylor Pearson In this episode of Nat Chat, we have Taylor Pearson, author of The End of Jobs and writer on business, psychology, philosophy, and other related topics on his site taylorpearson.me. Taylor is a super-smart, young guy, who I wanted to bring on because he has a very interesting history and set of experiences that are relevant to anyone looking to pursue a non-traditional college path. He graduated with a history degree but ran off to Brazil, taught himself marketing, and started landing freelance gigs with a number of different companies in the states. That turned into working closely with a few location independent entrepreneurs who he ended up traveling around the world with, which all led to observations he made about the changing job market and emergence of entrepreneurship which he wrote about in his book, The End of Jobs We cover a wide range

“If you think you are interested in something, do it and validate or invalidate it as quickly as you can, it’s fine if it’s haphazard.” - Adil Majid For the first real episode of Nat Chat, I sat down with my close friend, housemate, and co-conspirator on countless projects, Adil Majid. Adil had an unconventional and wide-ranging college experience that would give reassurance to anyone who feels like they don’t have a plan. After spending his first two years focused on a more traditional consulting career path, he decided it wasn’t for him, and started working on a number of other projects. Those soon led to getting into Y-Combinator, and when he had to leave that project (it’s a fun story we cover in the episode), rapidly teaching himself design, taking on freelance projects, and eventually landing internships and work with silicon valley startups that led to his job now doing software design for Spire. We cover a wide range of topics, including: How Adil taught himself design How he found mentors to learn f

What do you do if you’re a college student or recent grad, who feels like they don’t fit in the world of grades, lecture halls, and one size fits all careers? What do you do if… You don’t like classes and don’t learn well in them? You feel like the typical career prospects aren’t exciting? You’re depressed from being locked into a one size fits all system? You feel like your peers and parents don’t support you going a non-traditional route? You want to be an artist, entrepreneur, early startup member, or anything else that doesn’t fit the common mold? There’s no clear roadmap or good system for college students to pursue these alternative career paths, and I want to make them more accessible for more students through these interviews and episodes. Be sure to subscribe for future content, and check out the other launch episodes! All show notes can be found at https://nateliason.com/podcast